Tom Cotton, David Perdue, and the Trap of Lying for Donald Trump

In denigrating anyone who called the President out for his slurs, Senators Cotton and Perdue (pictured here in August) show their willingness to humiliate themselves on his behalf.

Photograph by Zach Gibson / Getty

On Monday, the Washington Post shed some light on how Senators Tom
Cotton, of Arkansas, and David Perdue, of Georgia, felt able to assert
that President Donald Trump had not referred to Africa as a collection
of
“shithole”
countries—a comment that the White House itself did not, at first,
bother to protest—and thus that those who said he did, including their
fellow-senators, were liars. According to the Post, “Three White House
officials said Perdue and Cotton told the White House that they heard
‘shithouse’ rather than ‘shithole,’ allowing them to deny the
President’s comments on television over the weekend.” Is that how people
sleep at night in Trump’s Washington? The stories that Republicans tell
themselves to justify their partnership with, or obedience to, the
President are not just absurd; they are pathetic. SpongeBob SquarePants would be
laughed out of the Krusty Krab for telling them. And they are poisonous.

It should be clear that the house/hole distinction, should it even have
existed, would not count as “allowing” Cotton and Perdue to deny the
President’s remarks on any terms. But the ones on which they did so are
particularly egregious, because they offered themselves as witnesses to
other senators’ supposed dishonor. Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat of
Illinois, had confirmed the reported phrase “shithole countries”
publicly; Senator Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, had backed up the
press accounts more obliquely but unmistakably. Senator Tim Scott, his
Republican colleague, who is African-American, told reporters that
Graham had confirmed the essentials of the report to him; Graham didn’t
dispute that. Graham had also publicly said that there was a racial
aspect to the remarks, which he said he’d called the President on,
saying, by his account, “America is an idea, not a race.” Graham also
told the Charleston Post and
Courier that he favored a merit-based immigration system—a phrase that Trump
uses a great deal—“But when I say merit-based, I don’t mean just
Europe.” The suggestion was that the President had a different view.

In contrast, Cotton, appearing on Sunday news programs, specifically
disparaged Durbin’s credibility. “I didn’t hear it, and I was sitting no
further away from Donald Trump than Dick Durbin was,” Cotton told John
Dickerson on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “And I know, and I know what
Dick Durbin has said about the President’s repeated statements is
incorrect.” He also said that Durbin had a history of dishonesty.

When Dickerson asked Cotton about the thrust of the remarks, as opposed
to the President’s word choice, Cotton said, “I did not hear derogatory
comments about individuals or persons.” Perhaps there was another
rationalization in there: he was being derogatory about whole
populations, not individuals! But, if that was Cotton’s thinking, it
echoed, rather than dodged, Trump’s unwillingness to see African
countries as the homes of individuals—of persons—instead of as abstract
and barely distinguishable entities that can be derided and written off.
In any event, in the next sentence, Dickerson made the terms of Cotton’s
lies clear when he asked, “So the sentiment is totally phony that is
attributed to him?”—meaning to the President. Cotton answered, “Yes.” At
the same time, Perdue was busy on ABC’s “This Week,” telling George Stephanopoulos, in even more categorical terms, that Durbin was guilty
of a “gross misrepresentation” of Trump’s remarks, saying that such
“language” was simply not used.

When Stephanopoulos noted that there were multiple sources who said
otherwise—indeed, the President himself reportedly called friends to
brag about what he had said—Perdue replied, “Multiple sources? There
were six of us in the room. I haven’t heard any of those six sources
other than Senator Durbin talk about what was said.” Perdue brings up a
real issue, though it does not point in the direction he claims. There
were actually seven lawmakers in the room—in addition to Durbin, Cotton,
Perdue, and Graham, there were Congressmen Kevin McCarthy, Republican of
California, who is the House Majority Leader and has not commented (but,
as the Washington Post noted, stood quietly next to the President when
he denied the reports on Sunday; Trump also called himself the “least
racist person”); Bob Goodlatte, Republican of Virginia, who also has not
commented publicly; and Mario
Díaz-Balart,
Republican of Florida, who has said that he doesn’t want to talk about
the language in the meeting because he wants to keep a “seat at this
table.” Among others present, John Kelly, Trump’s chief of staff, has
not commented; Kirstjen
Nielsen,
the Homeland Security Secretary, said on Fox News on Sunday that she
didn’t “recall him saying that exact phrase.” (On Tuesday, in sworn
testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, she said that she
didn’t “hear” the word, but acknowledged that the President had used
“tough language.”) They all need to speak more clearly, about shitholes
or shithouses, if nothing else so that the public has a good gauge of
who is willing to lie, and how blatantly, for the President.

Trump seems to be curious about that question, too. According to the
Post, members of his Administration at first thought that the
controversy could be settled in the shady realm of “do not recall,”
since the President had, again, reportedly talked to others about using
derogatory language. They were caught by surprise when he started
tweeting about how the accounts of his language were outright false.
Indeed, he has said that they were proof that “Dicky Durbin” and other
Democrats didn’t care about a deal on Dreamers, and were willing to blow
up the negotiations by lying about him. Why the change? It is hard to
know what is in the President’s mind. Perhaps he was struck by the
vehemence of the backlash. But perhaps he also listened to what the
other Republicans were saying, and had an insight that they would,
indeed, back him up. It was a bully’s triple play: first, he got to slur
whole nations. Then he got his guys to gang up on anyone who called him
out for it, which produced the final prize: the acknowledgement that the
Republican lawmakers were his guys, subordinate and willing to
humiliate themselves on his behalf.

What is notable is that, at first, Cotton and Perdue had tried, in a
joint statement, to hedge by saying that they did “not recall the
President saying these comments specifically.” But, as his lies
escalated, so did theirs, to the point where they were backing up the
idea that the media was involved in a fake-news conspiracy. They didn’t
need to do so—after their Sunday appearances, Lindsey Graham said,
according to the Post and Courier, “My memory hasn’t evolved. I know
what was said and I know what I said”—yet they chose that route. But it is,
apparently, hard to lie halfway for Trump; he won’t let you. Maybe it’s
time for the Republicans to stop lying to themselves about that, too.

Amy Davidson Sorkin has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2014.